Blessed by Night

"Aww, hey firestarter. Glad to see you're feeling okay."

"Yea.. what happened? Where is my squad?"

Anna pointed beneath them to the all terrain vehicle that was riding across the road smoothly.

"They all made it clear of whatever you did in time. Other than a real need for air conditioning, they're pretty much fine."

Bianca looked down at the road and her eyes caught sight of some fresh burns on the exposed parts of Anna's arms.

"O-Oh my god, look at your back! I-I can't believe I did this, I'm so sorry!"

"Stop wriggling, you little worrywort! I'm going to be fine, I had to pick you up and get you out of that tar pit you created. I'll heal in an hour or less."

Bianca fell silent once again, and it felt like the right time for Anna to make one of her famously dark jokes that made everyone uncomfortable.

"Besides, I used to burn myself worse than this when I was depressed in middle school."

"Oh my god!"

Anna cackled happily, relieved that her joke could still make her family so uncomfortable.

It was the greatest part of having a fucked up adolescence. (A/N : if you ever wondered why Anna was my favorite, this is why.)

Bianca fell silent as she rode on Anna's back, and she rested her cheek on her shoulder blade.

"I'm surprised he didn't come and get me himself."

"…He would have, but he was worried you might have been upset with him for trying to coddle you again. But I'm your best friend, not your girlfriend so I don't have to give a damn about what you want."

Bianca rolled her eyes and gave Anna a hard flick on the back of the head.

"It's not that I don't like it when he babys me… it's just that I don't want him to see me as something he has to worry about all the time.

We're supposed to be partners, so I want him to trust that I can handle myself and protect our personnel, our family … our baby."

Anna wasn't the best at giving advice like this, but she felt that she still had to try.

"You know.. I sometimes get worried when I watch Sei use a knife really fast."

"…?"

"And even when you're working in the shop, I worry you might accidentally drop an anvil on your foot or something."

"You sound like my dad!"

"And with our fiancé… I worry about him everytime he leaves my sight. Even though I already know he's the strongest thing walking around on this planet right now.

You worry about people because you love them, you know? Even if you know that they are good at what they do and you shouldn't be worried, you can't help it sometimes.

It doesn't mean you think less of them, you're just… afraid to see something bad happen to them. So in that regard… I think you should let him baby you as much as he wants. Because without a doubt it is so much better than the alternative."

Bianca fumbled around on Anna's back and started patting down her sides, pockets and breasts.

"…B… What are you doing?"

"Looking for cue cards, there's no way you came up with all of that on your own! I can't even get you to read webnovels!"

"There's no pictures, I need more visualization!!"

"Some authors made character arts!"

"Not enough of them!"

"How were you able to read fan fiction then?!"

"Oh, they were mostly just porn. The good kind that makes you feel insightful after, not the crude kind that makes you feel like you need to convert to Catholicism."

"Gods, you are such a deviant…"

"I'm sorry, I had no maternal figure in my childhood to keep me grounded."

"ANNA!"

The girls' pointless argument continued for upwards of five minutes before Bianca suddenly squeezed her friend tightly from behind.

"Thank you for trying to help me… I guess I owe our man an apology."

"Well, we'll see him in a couple more minutes. As far as apologies go, just words is a little boring ,so you can either lose your gag reflex or your anal virginity, which'll it be?"

Embarrassed, Bianca attempted to strangle her friend and nearly sent them both plummeting from the sky into the road below.

But as always, Anna had to have the last word.

"I'm close, h-harder..!"

"S-Shut up, pervert!"

-

"…And chances are, if you give him the jam, he'll want a muffin to go with it."

Malachi finally closed the children's book he was reading with a sigh and looked down at his chest.

Camille was sleeping on his chest softly, along with two other cute critters.

Anna's dark brown cat; Marcelline. And Luna's beloved kitsune; Shiro.

All three bundles of fluff had fallen asleep right on top of him in Camille's bedroom, and he was tempted to let them lie there for the rest of the night.

If he didn't have work to do, it would be a nice way to fall asleep.

Telekinetically, he lifted up all three of their small bodies and dropped them into Cami's crib, where there was more than enough room.

"Dad's got to go to work… good night, munchkin."

Malachi gave the young girl a small kiss on the forehead and both cheeks before backing away.

Once he turned around, Manda, Gwiya, Onini, and Vritra also gave their version of good night kisses before departing.

"Leaving so soon?"

Standing in the doorway was one of Malachi's fiancés, Joanne.

He slowly crossed the room and wrapped his arms around her, coming dangerously close to overwhelming his already stretched thin will.

He hadn't had any sex in two weeks and even just smelling the soap on Joanne's skin was almost enough to give him a happy ending.

"You know I don't have a choice…The other girls..?"

"Asleep already. Nadine held Luna hostage all day so that they could binge 'Atlanta' and 'The Boondocks'. They crashed in bed a few minutes ago." She whispered.

Malachi chuckled as quietly as he could when he imagined Nadine forcefully holding Luna down so that she would have no choice but to watch tv with her.

Joanne looked past him and eyed the crib full of sleeping younglings.

This admittedly made Malachi smile as he brushed her hair off her cheek.

"So… how are things?"

Joanne chuckled slightly as she rested her head against Mal's chest.

"You mean how am I adjusting to a life of stability after living like a madwoman for over thirty years? You want to know if I'm feeling flighty, or uncomfortable adjusting to family life?"

"I-I wouldn't say-"

"Nadine taught me how to read your mind."

'Shit.'

Against his expectations, Joanne didn't seem offended by his concerns and instead wrapped her arms around him tightly.

"I am… so very happy. For the first time in my life I have friends who don't think I'm stuck up or bitchy, and my relationship with my daughter, despite being somewhat strange, has never been in a better place.

Falling in love with you is the best thing that's ever happened to me, and I honestly wish that you had come to find me a little… a lot sooner. You don't need to worry about me running away, you should be more worried that you can't get rid of me."

Malachi's smile revealed the four shining fangs in his mouth and Joanne's heart sped up to an unhealthy degree.

Through all of the hell she experienced in her life, she never once imagined that it would be possible for her to love someone this much.

Just the mere thought of her having to go on without him was so depressing that it could almost overwhelm her.

She snaked her hands up to his face and pulled him down so that her lips could meet her own.

In the dim room illuminated only by a butterfly nightlight, the two of them shared a rather desperate and passionate kiss that contained no small amount of love and bottled lust.

Malachi only barely managed to pull away as Joanne slipped her hand into his pants with zero obstruction.

"Sorry, love.. I don't have the time for that right now."

"You're supposed to be using that thing tonight, right?" Joanne's husky voice threatened to sap away every bit of Mal's accumulated resolve.

"Yea, I figured it would be a nice little reward for our members, and since she let me borrow it I didn't want to waste the opportunity..."

"Come get me when you're stopped.. I don't think I can hold it anymore, and the detachable shower head isn't working like it used to."

A shiver ran down Malachi's spine as he heard the desperation in her voice that was practically a mirror image of his own.

"Alright then… don't go to sleep on me."

"I wouldn't dream of it."

-

Malachi crawled through the shadows and reappeared inside of one of Nightfalls personnel carrier vehicles.

Letting out a sigh, he reclined back into his seat and rubbed his eyes.

"Sorry it took me so long tonight, guys. She ended up needing two books to put her down instead of one."

From the passenger seat, Aisha looked over at her friend and the extremely noticeable bulge in his lap.

"Uh-huh, sure. You expect us to believe you got a hard on from 'If You Give a Moose a Muffin' ?"

Three of the girls in the backseat craned their necks to stare into Mal's lap.

Ryo, who was also riding with them, looked back and forth between Aisha and Malachi like he was thinking of something.

"How much longer do we have?" Mal asked.

"Calm down, pornstar. We're here."

Aisha pulled up onto the rocky bank of Jackson Lake, located in northwest Wyoming.

Malachi stepped out of the car and smiled widely when he saw two more cars coming from different directions, and very familiar presences inching closer at every second.